The subterranean border town of Outer Rexion was a ring of lights in the dark. Aodation anywhere but the back tunnels was expensive by most standards, but gold rank adventurers had standards all of their own. Zara Nareeered her suite and immediately spotted something different from when she left it. Someone had been in her room, despite explicit instrus to the trary.

  It was a multi-room suite, tred on two chairs and a couch set around a low table. There was something new oable, but she didn’t trate on that for the moment. Distrag her could easily be the ping her up for an attack from behind. Instead, she pushed her magical perception out hard, in clear disregard of propriety.

  She sensed no one else in the suite. She felt the agitation of those in the nearby rooms, but they were suppressing their anger. Social norms were all well and good, but no one wao bang on the gold-ranker’s door ahem to stop making a magical racket.

  Zara took slow steps forward, looking around. If she couldn’t sense anyoher no one was there or the person there was very dangerous. She moved to the coffee table for a closer look at what had bee on it: a pte of red and white baked squares. Her shoulders slumped as the tensio her body. She smiled at a memory from half her lifetime ago.

  “All these years and you’re still barging in uninvited.”

  “I think ‘barged’ is a little harsh,” Jason said as he stepped out of a er shadow that should not have been able to hide a person. He shrugged off his cloak and it dissolved into nothing. Zara shook her head, picked up one of the slices and delicately bit off a er. Then she elegantly lowered herself into an armchair as Jason dropped himself into the other like a sack of potatoes.

  “I’m a little surprised you’re the first one here,” Jason told her. “I’m also a little surprised you’re still turning your hair and eyes copper.”

  A trite expression crossed his face.

  “I had nht to tell you what to do with your body, even if my anger was justified. I’m sorry for that.”

  “We both made some bad choices back then. And you would have had to make fewer of them if I hadn’t dragged you into my mess.”

  “Those are old stories, and these are imes,” Jason said. “Perhaps it’s time to let all that go. And it does look good on you, although I suspect most things do.”

  “Are you flirting with me, Jason?”

  “No, I just have eyes. Why are you still wearing a different colour?”

  “The sapphire hair is iic to the royal family. I’m still adopted into House Nareen, and it makes things easier.”

  “Still publicly os with the royal family?”

  “No. Politics is more geable than the sea and there has beey of time for that to blow over. But I like being part of my mother’s family, and staying there keeps me out of the worst of it. Especially since my cousin became the orm King. And my father has bee softer siirement. I ending time with him in Rimaros when I was sent word you were back. That’s why I’m the first one here.”

  They sat ba their armchairs, looking one another over. her of them had aged, of course. Zara khat ranking up had ged little about her appearance, but Jason was a different story. His face had already ged a lot at silver rank, but his strange, nebulous eyes always drew the attention. Now he had the same eyes he had when they met at iron rank; dark, challenging and pyful.

  “Have your eyes ged back, or are they a disguise, like mine?”

  “Just a disguise. How effective it will be, I’m not sure. I’m having trouble taining myself.”

  “You always did.”

  He fshed that infuriating impish grin. He was more handsome thahey’d met, yet still somein by gold rank standards. His was still somehow too promi after ranking up han four times. It left his face oddly out of bance, yet it suited him perfectly. He always had a way of leaving her off bance as well.

  More profound than the physical ges was the way his mental state affected his physicality. Back then he’d been twitchy, wild and eic, as if he were hopped up on something. His body nguage was like a rabbit hopping on the spot, unsure whether to py or run away.

  Now he was still. Certain. He looked at the world as if, whatever he decided, it was the world that would have to answer. Not many people reised that look. Most never met a diamond ranker, let alone enough to know that they all had it. Zara was one of the few who did.

  “Where did you get the ingredients?” she asked.

  “The ingredients?”

  “For the gem berry milk nut squares. We’re so far underground that the rock around us would be molten if not for the natural array,” she said. “The bronze rankers here have to ecialised magic items just to survive.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And you’ve been down here for what? A decade and a half?”

  “About that.”

  “So, where did you get gem berries and milk nuts to make this slice?”

  She took another bite, then spoke with her mouth full in distinctly undylike fashion.

  “It tastes exactly the same!”

  “That’s because it’s the same batch,” he told her.

  She swallowed it all in a gulp, not carefully chewing as she had before.

  “You fed me twenty-year-old baked goods?”

  He reached for the pte.

  “If you don’t want it…”

  Jason’s hand ped away by a trated burst of pressed air that didn’t disturb anything else in the room. He leaned back, his grin somehow being even more smug.

  “That was some precise wind trol.”

  “I did do a little practise on the way to gold rank, you know. I hate to break it to you, but time moves on while you’re off having ic advehe rest of us are living lives.”

  She barely caught the fsh of sadness before he reached out for the pte agaiook a slid stuffed half of it in his mouth, waggling his eyebrows at her. But the mask had slipped a little, and didn’t quite fit anymore.

  “It must be strange for you,” she said. “You go off and do these amazing things. Walkiween worlds. But then you e bad everything has ged on you. Missing the lives of friends. Some girl you met once used your name, nding you in the middle of a political tangle you her asked for nor deserved.”

  “Why did you?” he asked. “I never cared to ask, back then, but why me? Like you said, we only ever met a few times. I’ll grant you, that first time it was memorable, but I was no one back then.”

  “Do you really wao ahat?”

  “Should I?”

  “No. I plicated things for you the st time you came back. I hope I’ve mao learer in all this time.”

  She sighed a her half-eaten slice down oe before leaning bad staring at Jason.

  “You know I’ve been w with the team in your absence.”

  “No you haven’t.”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  “You haven’t been w with the team, Zara; you’ve been in it. You’ve spent more time w with them than I have, even having scattered since reag gold rank. You’re as much a part of the group as I am. Maybe even more so.”

  Zara took a long breath a out slowly as she stared at Jason.

  “It took me a long time to feel like I belonged,” she said. “Once I did, I felt an insecurity that maybe it was just in my head. That you would e bad kick me out. I asked to join you once before, and I know the circumstances were different, but I remember how angry you were. The way you looked at me.”

  “I wasn’t angry at you, Zara. I was just angry.”

  “It felt like you were angry at me.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe a bit.”

  “I don’t think I ever let go of that fear, irely. The way things ended with my st team…”

  “Do you mind if I ask about them?”

  “Rose retired. She works for the Adventure Society now. Orin is still adventuring. Hit gold rank not that long ago. He’s in a team with Kasper Irios and his friends. He’s—”

  “The friend you invoked my name for so he didn’t get stuck marrying you.”

  “Yes. Not my fi hour. It turns out my father was already w to… it doesn’t matter. Kasper is an adventurer, now, and Orin is the only one on his team to hit gold so far.”

  “Amos Pensinata’s influence?”

  “I don’t know. No one’s really seen him sihe transformation zone. He was around for a little while, settling the affairs of Orin’s team. Then he just kind of vanished. Some people say he retired, others that he’s w oing to diamond rank. He clearly wants to be left alone, so I never dug deeper.”

  She sighed.

  “I still think about my old team a lot. I wasn’t with them for all that long, but it felt like I was building a pce to belong. They were a Rimaros team who traihe same way I did. We thought the same, tactically and strategically. It was different with your team.”

  “Our team.”

  “Our team. Thank you. They were still figuring things out when Sophie recruited me. Losing you, Taika and Rufus all at once left massive gaps iactical options. I felt like a strarying to fill three holes when I didn’t fit in any of them. They didn’t seem worried because the way they work is so adaptable, but that’s not the way we train in Rimaros. For a long time, I thought I’d made a mistake.”

  “But not now.”

  “No. When Sophie pulled me in, I felt bereft of purpose. She told me there are worse things you dedicate a life to than helping people. It’s strange how you dismiss an idea for seeming so simple and obvious. I’d vinced myself that I had to find something plicated and ued to set me on my life path. It’s why I went chasing you.”

  “Just that?”

  “I’ll ask again: do you really wao ahat?”

  “No,” he said. “Not today. Do you know whehers will get here?”

  “Should be in the few days. Travis will be soon, as he’s still w out of Rimaros. He’s been doing cloud fsk research with House de Vard that diamond ranker who hates you. The others are farther away, mostly Vitesse. Last I heard, Neil was in the Mirror Kingdom with Nik.”

  Zara was startled at the smile that lit up Jason’s face.

  “How’s my little rabbit guy doing? He must have found a team by nht?”

  “Actually, he’s been w with the Adventure Society. They shop him out for expeditions that could use a unications and coordination specialist. He’s in very high demand, from what I’ve heard.”

  “That diamond ranker is going to e here, aren’t they?”

  “I suspect so. They didn’t like you dodging them for fifteen years.”

  “Are you using non-binary pronouns or did this diamond ranker split themselves into multiple people with magic?”

  “Pronouns. High-ranking shape-shifters often switch around their geravis introduced the cept of chosen pronouns and it’s catg on amongst gold and diamond rankers. Apparently. I don’t talk to that many diamond rankers.”

  “See, this is favouritism. Knowledge wouldn’t let me go around disseminating ideas from Earth.”

  “Only ones you didn’t uand for yourself. You introduced several cepts reted to cooking that I did not impede at all.”

  Zara looked around the room and saw nothing, but sensed a barely disible divine aura. She looked to Jason, whose attempt at looking ky inly u with amusement.

  “Oh, look at this,” he pio the room. “I’m out of my domain five minutes and already you’re eavesdropping.”

  “Are you saying you never used your omnisce within your domain?” Knowledge asked.

  “Yeah, well… shut up.”

  After some disembodied ughter, the divine aura vanished. Zara stared as he shook his head in amusement, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “Does that happen often?” she asked.

  “You mean gods having a chat?”

  “Yes.”

  “I dunno. How much is often? I’m in the club now, so I imagi’ll keep happening.”

  “The club?”

  “My membership is a bit odd. I’m not a god, obviously, but I’m irely… not a god, either.”

  “You’re a demigod?”

  “It’s more plicated than that. You want to see?”

  “See what?”

  He didn’t move. He stayed sitting where he was, eyes locked on her. His dark eyes gave way to the e and blue ones, but there was no other visible ge. At the same time, she felt the ge, and she instinctively pushed ba her chair. Like a god’s aura, it was vast and ected to some distant force. It was if he had bee an unstable portal to some pce of inprehensible power.

  And as suddenly as the sensation appeared, it vanished.

  “What are you?” she asked breathlessly.

  “plicated. I’ll save the big expnations for when we’re all together. I’ll probably need Clive’s help expiniain parts anyway.”

  “Things are going to get strange, aren’t they?”

  “Strange how?” Jason asked with unving innoce.

  “You know the Magic Society and Adventure Society are going to be all over you about this System thing.”

  “I’m more worried about Clive, to be ho. How excited was he when it happened?”

  “It’s probably best you don’t know.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I’m sure he won’t make a big deal of it,” Zara lied.

  “I’d run off to the other universe without him, but I’ll need him to set that up.”

  “The other universe. Where you’re from.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be heading over there in not too long. You’re ing, right?”

  “ I?”

  “Holy, it’s probably not up to you. I’m guessing Hump will make it a mandatory team activity.”

  Annou: Due to the release of Book 11 on Kindle Unlimited, chapters 791 - 882 will be removed from the site oh or 10th of July, depending on timezone.